it is certain that, after a romantic career, in
which he gained a German baronetcy, Kelley was clapped into prison on a
charge of fraud, and broke his neck while trying to escape.

Dr. Dee, in the meantime, a sadder if not a really wiser man, had found
his way back to England, where he essayed the difficult task of
retrieving his ruined fortunes. Elizabeth smiled on him as graciously as
ever, and at Christmas time sent to him a royal gift of two hundred
angels in gold. But he needed more than an occasional bounty; he needed
the assurance of a steady income, and the chance to pursue again his
scientific studies undisturbed by the phantoms of gnawing want. So, in a
memorial, "written with tears of blood," as he himself put it, Dee
begged the queen to appoint a commission to investigate his case and
review the evidence he would produce to prove that his services to the
nation warranted a reward. Promptly the commission was appointed, and as
promptly began its labors. This led to what Isaac Disraeli, perhaps
Dee's best biographer, has described as a "literary scene of singular
novelty."

Let me depict it in Disraeli's little known words: "Dee, sitting in his
library," says Disraeli, "received the royal commissioners. Two tables
were arranged; on one lay all the books he had published, with his
unfinished manuscripts; the most extraordinary one was an elaborate
narrative of the transactions of his whole life. This manuscript his
secretary read, and, as it proceeded, from the other table Dee presented
the commissioners with every testimonial. These vouchers consisted of
royal letters from the Queen, and from princes, ambassadors, and the
most illustrious persons of England and of Europe; passports which
traced his routes, and journals which noted his arrivals and departures;
grants and appointments and other remarkable evidences; and when these
were wanting, he appealed to living witnesses.

"Among the employments which he had filled, he particularly alluded to a
'painful journey in the winter season, of more than fifteen hundred
miles, to confer with learned physicians on the Continent, about her
majesty's health.' He showed the offers of many princes to the English
philosopher, to retire to their courts, and the princely establishment
at Moscow proffered by the czar; but he had never faltered in his
devotion to his sovereign.... He complained that his house at Mortlake
was too public for his studies, and incommodious for